Monday, November 12, 2018

On Abyss Wagers, 1 of 5

On Abyss Wagers

By
Nathaniel Hellerstein

I.Introduction

This essay describes a
class of philosophical conundrums akin to “Pascal’s Wager”. For each of these
“abyss wagers”, it is rational to bet against various negative scenarios, on
the grounds that if any of these scenarios are true, then all bets are off; therefore
the wagers have no downside.

The abyss wagers here
described include: Pascal’s Wager, Smith’s Wager, the Dissenter’s Wager, Gödel’s
Wager, Teller’s Wager, and the Android’s Wager. For instance, in Gödel’s
Wager, the negative scenario is the inconsistency of arithmetic. According to Gödel,
if the axioms of arithmetic are consistent then those axioms cannot prove their
own consistency. Here I argue that it is rational to wager that arithmetic
makes sense; for if it does not then all bets are irrelevant. Therefore betting
on arithmetic (and logic and reason) is a bet that you cannot lose.

II. The
Abyss

Blaise Pascal, the Jansenist who helped
discover the theory of probability, proposed a famous Wager; is one to believe
that God exists, or not? His reasoning was that if God does not exist, then it
does not matter if one believes or not; but if God does in fact exist, then it
would be far better to believe; and therefore belief is the better wager.

This gambler’s
theology is undermined by its hidden assumptions, for there is more than one
way to believe. Consider George Smith’s Wager:

If
there is a theistic god, either he is just, or he is not. If he is just, he
will not punish honest disbelief. But, if he is not just, there is no guarantee
he won’t punish one unjustly, regardless of one’s belief or disbelief.
Therefore, there is no downside to honest disbelief in any theistic God.

Here is
a political version of these wagers. The government is just, or it is not. If
it is just, then it will not punish honest dissent. But if it is not just, then
there is no guarantee that it won’t punish you unjustly, whether or not you
dissent. Therefore there is no downside to dissent.The Dissenter’s Wager!

I mentioned Smith’s Wager
and the Dissenter’s Wager to my wife Sherri, and she scoffed. “No downside to
dissent? Au contraire! It might draw the attention of the government, and the
nail that sticks out gets hammered down!” I admitted that her logic has force; and
it applies back to Smith’s Wager. There are plenty of reluctant theists,
believing just in case.

So Smith and Dissenter Wagers
are flawed; the chaotic breakdown case still allows for enough difference for
not all bets to be off. The unjust god, and the tyrannical government, don’t
oppress everyone equally - at least at first. In the beginning, they withhold
enough threat and make enough distinctions to give cowards a refuge; but power
corrupts intellect as well as empathy, so eventually they overreach, the people
have nothing to lose, and the desperate logic of the Wager takes hold.